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More than 1.25 million people would need to apply for Border Patrol and Immigration
and Customs Enforcement jobs to meet President Donald Trump’s hiring goals, according
to a government report.

The Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection bureau would need
750,000 applicants to fill 5,000 Border Patrol positions, while ICE would need 501,750
applicants to fill 10,000 immigration officer jobs, the DHS Office of Inspector General
said in a
report released July 31. The OIG based those estimates on current hiring and attrition rates.

The inspector general recommended that the DHS engage in extensive workforce planning
before it begins hiring. This will give the department a better idea of whether it
needs the employees and, if so, how it should go about hiring them, the report said.

“Neither CBP nor ICE could provide complete data to support the operational need or
deployment strategies for the additional 15,000 agents and officers they were directed
to hire,” the report said. “Without well-defined operational needs and comprehensive
deployment strategies, DHS may not be able to achieve the correct number, type, and
placement of personnel.”

The DHS in comments included with the report said it “remains committed to ensuring
correct staffing levels, ratios, and placements to guide targeted recruitment campaigns
for priority Mission Critical Operations.” A new “manpower model registry” will help
the department meet its personnel goals, the DHS added.

The department declined Bloomberg BNA’s request for further comment.

Alternatives to Hiring Surge?

The report’s findings are “an indication of how difficult it will be to fill these
roles,” Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute, told
Bloomberg BNA Aug. 1.

The result of the hiring surge that the administration has proposed for the CBP and
ICE may be lower-quality applicants, Nowrasteh said.

“You may have people who can’t get jobs with law enforcement agencies near where they
live,” he said, noting that Border Patrol positions, in particular, often involve
moving to remote locations.

It’s not clear that the CBP and ICE even need to hire 15,000 new employees, particularly
when there’s been a decrease in apprehensions at border crossings, Nowrasteh added.

“Maybe hiring more Border Patrol agents isn’t the way to go,” he said. Other options
include moving Border Patrol agents in other locations to the southwest border, where
there’s the most need, or moving qualified employees from office positions to the
field, Nowrasteh said.

The Cato Institute is a Washington-based nonprofit that describes its mission as defending
“individual liberty, limited government, free markets and peace.”

Low Morale Could Complicate Hiring

Hiring 15,000 employees is by itself a “large and complex undertaking” that requires
a workforce plan, Mallory Barg Bulman, vice president for research and evaluation
at the Partnership for Public Service, told Bloomberg BNA Aug. 1.

When the hiring involves a “geographically diverse population that needs security
clearances, a strategic human capital plan is critical,” she said.

Low morale at the CBP and ICE makes hiring the agents even tougher, Bulman said. In
the partnership’s most recent “Best Places to Work in the Federal Government” report,
CBP was ranked 291 out of 305 federal agency “
subcomponents,” while ICE was ranked 299, she said.

During the last hiring surge at the Border Patrol, in the early 2000s, “people who
shouldn’t have been hired were hired” because of the need to ramp up quickly, David
Inserra told Bloomberg BNA. Inserra is a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation,
a Washington-based group that supports limited government.

The DHS has since tightened its hiring standards and processes, Inserra said. But
this in turn has made it more difficult for the department to hire border control
personnel, he said.

The inspector general is correct in saying the department has to take a good look
at its workforce needs before it embarks on the hiring surge, he said.

“Any answer on the ideal workforce has to come from inside DHS,” Inserra said. The
department “can’t arbitrarily increase number of employees, without knowing what its
needs are,” he said.

Plan Needed, Union Says

Along with finding a new DHS secretary to replace John Kelly, who is now chief of
staff at the White House, the department needs a strong workforce plan, J. David Cox
Sr. told Bloomberg BNA. Cox is president of the American Federation of Government
Employees.

“We need to make sure all new working people brought aboard the agency are in the
best position to succeed, and we’re sure the next director will ensure they are,”
Cox said in an email.

The AFGE is an AFL-CIO affiliate that represents about 700,000 federal and District
of Columbia government employees, including roughly 17,000 Border Patrol agents.

To contact the reporter on this story: Louis C. LaBrecque in Washington at
llabrecque@bna.com

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